Evangelicals who regularly attend church are actually less likely to back Trump than more casual churchgoers

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May 6, 2019 6:01PM (UTC)

Although evangelical Christians are seen as President Donald Trump’s most steadfast supporters, a new survey suggests he has a surprising vulnerability within this group.

The Christian Post reports that a study of Republican voters conducted last year by the nonprofit group Democracy Fund found that evangelicals who regularly attend church are actually less likely to back Trump than evangelicals who are more casual churchgoers.

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“The research found that while ‘Inactive Evangelical Christians’ had a 0.81 favorability for Trump, ‘Active Evangelical Christians’ had a 0.74 favorability for Trump, which was the same as the ‘Seculars’ category (0.74) but slightly higher than the ‘overall mean’ (0.71),” the Christian Post reports.

David Barker, professor of government and director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, says that this survey is evidence that “being religious actually leads you to support Trump less” among evangelicals.

“The highest level of support we see among religious people are people who identify as born-again Christians but aren’t actually doing anything about that most of the time,” he explains.

In other words, evangelicals who more regularly attend church to study the words of Jesus Christ are less likely to follow a thrice-married serial adulterer who openly mocked someone for having a disability during the 2016 presidential campaign.